Ownageness of the Dark Knight

** warning: there will be spoilers about "The Dark Knight Rises" movie in this post **

This summer I was really excited for the last Batman movie. I actually didn't watch the first two movies in theaters because I was in school so I was totally outside of the movies world, but got to watch them on DVD a few years after they were released. What got me excited was to watch the trailer for the  "The Dark Knight Rises" earlier this year (I was probably watching the Avengers haha) because I really like to watch the conclusion of a story.

So two weeks before the "The Dark Knight Rises" was released, I re-watched "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" to refresh myself of the overall story line. It was actually quite an enjoyable exercise!

On the Saturday (one day after the release date), I went to watch last movie with a group of 18 people and I reserved the seats through the Empire Plus (cost $2 more but I don't have to go for lineup). And after watching it, I started to think more about the movie, and as I thought about it more, I realized how good it is, to the point that I wanted to re-watched it (which I did). I think this trilogy of Batman can become one of the best movie trilogies of all times.

I want to take this opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the "The Dark Knight Rises" and why I think its' so great.

Weak points
First, I will start with the weak points. I heard of criticism towards this movie, and I agreed with most of them. For sure this is not a perfect movie, but I think these weak points do not overshadow the greatness of the movie. Here are the two main weak areas:

• Too unrealistic: there are a fairly amount of exaggerated events like Bruce Wayne coming back from the Middle East to Gotham in a matter of hours after he climbed up the hole, or his back getting healed, or the terrorist group able to set up explosives so easily, etc. But if we are picky about loopholes, then most movies will fall short. In general, I don't think it was too far-fetched.
• Bane as a character: I really didn't like his muffled voice, but we don't get to know much about his motivation as a villain (other than his allegiance with Tania). It would have been nice to know a bit more about him, though there was already too many characters to focus on (Catwoman, Detective Gordon, Robin Blake, Tania).

Actually my greatest disappointment about the trilogy is that Katie Holmes didn't take the role of Rachel on the second movie.

Plot
Comparing to "The Dark Knight", the "The Dark Knight Rises" is slower in pace, and it feels less intense. I guess "The Dark Knight" did set up a very high standard (94% on rottentomatoes) and it is considered one of the best superhero movie ever, often described as an art masterpiece in the form of superhero film. There is not a single boring moment, hard to predict plot, and psychologically very engaging. One has to realize that "The Dark Knight Rises" is a different type of movie. First of all, the main villain is quite different. Having the Joker definitely spices up the movie to be action-packed, unpredictable, chaotic, and mentally really engaging. "The Dark Knight" focuses more on the battle between good and evil, whereas "The Dark Knight Rises" focuses more on the resurgence of the Batman as the symbol of hope for Gotham, hence there is less action and more stuff about Bruce Wayne's internal battles, and in how he gets owned but gets back up again.

Theme
The overall theme of the trilogy is the battle of good and evil. "Batman Begins" focuses on revenge, and "The Dark Knight" touches upon the corruption and promptness of evil in men. "The Dark Knight Rises" talks about rising up after failure, not giving up after defeat but coming back even stronger to own your enemies. Something that is encouraging since we will face many failures in life.

Character development
"Batman Begins" is cool because we get to see Bruce Wayne getting trained as a ninja and growing from an angry and directionless adolescent to a man who is committed to fight crime. In "The Dark Knight" he is consolidated as Gotham's superhero but finds the possibility of retiring and letting Harvey Dent be the Knight of Gotham, and pursue a personal life with Rachel. Even though we think the Joker lost the battle in "The Dark Knight", it was actually a total lost for Batman, his love interest (Rachel) died, the guy who he thought would represent the good side of Gotham turned into a bad guy (Harvey Two-Faces), and the symbol of hope that Batman represented now turned into the embodiment of evil (for killing Harvey) so that Gotham will not resigned in its fight against evil.

So "The Dark Knight Rises" focuses on the resurgence of the superhero who had given up pursuing a personal life and is content with letting the name of Batman embodied hatred from the people of Gotham, and is slowly rotting as a human being. But he gets back in the battle, but shortly is badly defeated by Bane to the point of almost death. But his life is spared only so that he can experience the desperation of seeing Gotham getting destroyed. And it is in the hole when we see Bruce Wayne battling his desperation and fear to climb the pit to save his city. He was not able to climb it in the first couple of times because he didn't really fear death so the fear of losing his city was not at its highest peak. It's until he gets rid of the rope and knowing that is all-or-nothing so he was afraid of dying (because dying means losing Gotham) then he was able to rise and rise.

The introduction of Catwoman was genius. Her character does complement Batman very well, and her existence sheds some light for Bruce Wayne.

Legacy
At "Batman Begins", Bruce Wayne wanted Batman to be the symbol of hope for Gotham in the fight against organized crime. It was to give courage to every citizen to stand firm in this battle. By the end of "The Dark Knight", this symbol of hope became the embodiment of hatred (since Joker turned Harvey into a bad guy, so Batman had to falsely become the responsible for killing Harvey in order to not cause people from Gotham to lose hope). This was an act of sacrifice he made for Gotham's sake, and it is very honorable but at the same time does not result in a long lasting solution.

But in "The Dark Knight Rises" after he comes back from the hole, he leads the counterattack to save Gotham, and he saves the city from the nuclear explosion by sacrificing himself. The difference from the previous movie is that he sacrificed himself ensuring that his legacy of hope in fighting against rime will be carried on by the people of Gotham (especially Robin). This is key because Batman was not meant to be there forever but was intended to encourage the city as a whole in this battle against evil. This was accomplished in "The Dark Knight Rises".

There was an interesting dialogue between Catwoman and Batman right before they were about to embark in battle, Catwoman tries to convince Batman to leave with her before the city gets destroyed since Batman has already given everything to Gotham, but Batman replies, "not yet, not everything". Perhaps leaving this legacy was what he had not done yet.

Overall, "The Dark Knight Rises" resolves the problems that Bruce Wayne inherited from "Batman Begins" and  "The Dark Knight"  by establishing Batman as a lasting symbol of hope for Gotham, giving his best on his service to Gotham (to follow his father's shoes) and developing a life for his own (maybe with Catwoman). I really enjoyed how this ended, definitely a very ownage trilogy and ending.